Just Fahgetaboutit

Man, what a pain in the arse of an evening just trying to get out for something simple as a ride. The simple plan was to get out for 2 hours or so with some buddies or alone if need be. I was getting out to ride either way. I did hook up with Conlan, Gov'ner, and Chad for a bit and having a decent ride when all was said and done, but man, I'd have lost my head if it wasn't screwed on tight yesterday.

It started off getting ready to go in the office. Hmm, seems I forgot my bike computer. Ahh well, I can live without it. Wait a minute, where are my bibs? Shit, now I have to go home. Sure I could run for a couple hours without my bibs, but really, I enjoy that layer of diaper between the seat and my junk. So, instead of meeting at the shop at 4:30, now I had to run home and grab a few odds and ends and figure out a new meeting spot. We settled on Principal Park and I boogied to get down there in time. Once home I found my bike computer wasn't charged yet, double strike for that now. At least I plugged it in for a few minutes to the portable charger and got a little data.

From there I jumped in the truck and sped off to rendezvous with the boys. Once down there, I went to put my lights and such on the bike realizing I'd now forgot my main battery sitting in my gym bag at home. Doh! Ahh well, I still had my helmet light, which anyone that has ridden with me, knows its enough to vaporize most anything that comes into its path all on its own. So, I suit up and hit the trail. all is right in the world now.

We loop back through Grays and Waterworks, heading back towards Windsor Heights and Chad splits off for home. Once up in Windsor Heights, my plan was to work over to Urbandale Ave and hit the interurban for a loop back downtown to my truck. Conlan and Gov'ner pulled off to head back going down Beaver and I headed onward. By now dusk was settling in around 5:45 and it was time for headlights. That's really odd, my vaporizer headlight wasn't lighting up. Apparently the battery was either dead from the last time I used it or had drained down to nothing. In either case, I was a man without a light.

Luckily it wasn't that dark yet, but by the time I worked my way down towards the botanical center, darkness had pretty well set in. The dead end road where the trail comes out was a massive ice field that I felt lucky to escape with nary a fall. Beyond that, it was pretty uneventful heading back to the truck. I shorted myself to 1.5 hours out, but at least it was outside. On the plus side, I made it back in time to scarf some burgers and head out for a couple hours of rec league volleyball with my wife to finish off the night.

I'm shooting for an hour or so snowshoeing through Denmans tonight right after work if anyone happens to be interested. Might be one of the last days possible with all the warm weather headed our way.

Viva la taco ride

Long live the Taco Ride! Even if we can't hit the dirt, Gif's still serves up tacos every Wednesday night. Fuller and I met up for a couple hours of black label last night. I took off a bit early and scouted Denman's in hopes that the temps and people had collaborated to make a rideable trail. It was "rideable", but not what I'd call pleasurable by any means. It was in similar shape to the Big Creek snowmobile trails. You could move and get up on it, but resistance was huge and you'd better put your pressures way down to add some float. Considering we'd still be riding some pavement, airing down that low wasn't going to be much of an option so I bailed a few hundred yards in.

Rolled up the trail to meet Fuller at the junction of Clive and Windsor Heights greenbelt trails. We opted to roll down Clive way thinking/hoping the glare ice sheets would be mostly gone. It didn't matter much to me rolling on studs, but Steve on fat tires would probably be happier if we had a bit less ice. Ran into Kent coming back the other way and chatted with him a bit. He said that RRVT was snowed in so we probably wouldn't be heading that way even if we wanted. Little did he know that I (mostly) and Fuller are pretty pig headed when trying to get from point A to B. The connector portion from the greenbelt to RRVT was indeed snowed in and hadn't been plowed all season from the looks of it. We busted some trail and tried to dodge frozen footsteps by riding the deep powder on the sides of the trail. Eventually we ground our way up to the main trail only to find 1 short section had been plowed for a couple blocks and then it was back to nothing. At that point we threw in the towel and hit the road.

We opted to head through Country Club and follow the back end of my old west side road loop to hook back up with WDM trails over by the other bike shop on the west side. Fuller must've been going for some heroics as he opted to head back towards Rassy's where I parked in lieu of heading towards home at this point. Somewhere rolling along EP True I felt the need for some refreshment. Apparently we were sharing a similar thought and we headed to Gif's for tacos and beer. We capped off the evening with a couple other taco riders that showed up (albeit NOT on bike) in the form of Al and Hal. After drying our sweaty selves out for near an hour, we headed back to the shop and Fuller continued on home. A better way to kill 2 hours, I can't think of.

Black death

Or maybe not... I used to view ice as a waiting death trap. After quickly finding out how easily a bicycle loses traction and crashes on ice last year, I gained a healthy, if not a bit fearful respect for the black death. Low tire pressures, puckered cheeks, and smooth steady pedal strokes were the remedies of choice for me. I still managed to wipe out more times than I care to remember last winter.

Last night I just had to answer the call to get back outside. In a feat of hopelessness, I first tried to check out Denman's. The levee trail was a mess of frozen icy tracks that were basically unridable so I peered over the edge to the entrance line close to the creek. Hmm, I saw a solitary track through the snow that looked like it might be rideable. I plunged over the edge and immediately began a slide for life down the frozen crust of the levee hillside while still partially clipped in to my bike. If it weren't for blind luck and my bike staying something upright and slowed down by breaking through the crust at random points, I'd have ended the ride quicker and much wetter after crawling out of the creek. I quickly deduced that the track I was seeing had been ridden in above freezing temps and now was again unusable. Back to the drawing board.

I figured if nothing else, the black label might be interested to check out and see how bad it truly was. After our heatwave on Friday and plowing 2" of slush for most of the way, I figured they'd be frozen over and as ugly as the levee trail. Thankfully I was pretty much wrong. I opted to head up into the Windsor Heights trail system and ended up north of Douglas before turning back as I was headed further into unfamiliar neighborhood trails at night and didn't want to force having to ride roads to get back home. The trails were an eclectic mix of perfectly dry trail sprinkled with slush, glare ice, packed ice, and snow sprinkled ice. Notice a theme here? Actually, the ice was only truly bad in a few spots where it covered the trail for extended sections.

I turned back and opted to get a few more miles in by heading out on the Clive Greenbelt. Courtney and I were the only two bike tracks on the trail. Once I got about a mile in, I knew why. There was an extended section of the slush that had indeed frozen into a sheet of glare ice with ridges. This sent me just squirrely enough on the bike that I decided I'd pressed my luck enough for one evening and turned back. All in all an hour and fifteen on the bike with around 15 miles on the meter. Not the greatest, but I'll take what I can get for being outside in this weather. What we need is a nice 2-3" slightly tacky snow that can be packed down over this ice and for the weather to stay cold. I think that would give us back some of the trails for sure.

So how did I do on the ice you ask? The new studded tires are the cat's meow and then some. While I still treated some of the extended ice spots with reverence, I blew through most of it with nary a thought other than whee, I'm riding like its dry pavement over stuff that could potentially slam me to the ground and splatter my brains out like a week old stew. Actually, it was pretty fun and a great feeling to be back to only respecting the ice in lieu of fearing it.